After watching the two gameplay videos i gotta say this game is shaping out to be the best yet.

I like how they brought back the skull indicator of how many units were killed by the attack and how much damage was actually dealt.

I also think that the foreign gameplay video was allot better than the english one. Even though i didnt understand a word said, we did get to see two new neutral creatures, the Earth and Water elementals.
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So much has changed in my absence.

Did anybody watch that enhanced interview with Erwan? At the end he said that they will work on RMG for sure. YAY!!! Great news!
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Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions.

Lots of interesting explanations from Erwan about some developement choices ... things we've been asking for monthes

3 things were important :
- The respec option will only be available (once per hero ?) only at level 20. It will allow you to respec the skill tree but also the reputation choices of your hero.

- The Crystallized Dragon Blood will be a very rare ressource, but it will be extremely needed to recruit the high tier units (not sure if he only meant champions or champions and elites) and the high level town buildings. Being the sole rare ressource and being extremely needed, they want us to fight for it and to defend our mines by putting units in control points.

- The RMG will be available at "some" point. Maybe not at release, but it will either be in a patch or as a free gift to the community.

A RMG is the most promising news.
Whatever they the developers might do, they must no take a vacation when the game's done. We demand a RMG! (or at least some of us do... )
____________"You turn me on Jaba"
- Meroe

Don't know about best as some features are a big ambiguous and may not easily be accepted by all. Some will be enjoyed, others missed, that's bound to cloud one's judgement But I really like the direction of the game development for the most part.
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Being human is a roller coaster ride of emotions during rainstorms and sunshine, sprinkled with moments when you can almost reach the stars.

We’ve been allowed to play through the introduction map, which represents more than 2 hours of games. Black Hole developers aren’t fools and they didn’t change the game fundamentals that much. Heroes 6 is still a turn-based strategy game mixed with RPG elements (…)

Resources :
Though they still brought some changes to the game. First of all, the economic part of the game has been simplified : no more 7 resources, instead there are only 4 – the crystal being the only rare resource. This change makes the game pace much faster and more nervous.

In previous Heroes, you were paying special attention to the most important resource of your factions – which wasn’t always the same than your neighbors’. It could be fun to deprive your opponent from a mine as much as it could be somewhat useful to have some extra resources, but it was mostly a waste of time since you had other priorities.

In Heroes 6, each resource is becoming capital. Gaining access to them before an opponent or even stealing them from him can be a step towards victory. War is everywhere now. Likewise, the times you were blocked in previous Heroes because you were lacking sulfur or gems are over. Everything goes faster, almost without a break. (…)

Skills :
Special powers gained through the reputation system are a complement to the new way of managing your heroes in Heroes 6. Out with the semi-randomness and its choice among 2 or 3 skills every level, randomly picked in a list based on your class. Now, each hero has a skilltree in which he can spend talent points. Some skills are based on your reputation choice, some others on your class and some others on your faction. Spells are integrated in this system and don’t require the building of a magic guild to be learnt.

Some general skills are also bringing some advantages out of combat. Some will let you earn more experience (learning), some will give you better chance to recruit creatures (diplomacy) and some other will allow a hero to spend no movement point when picking up resources, accessing a building or entering a town (Snatch)

Combat :
Fights appear to be much clearer and strategic than before. Thanks to a change to the initiative system among other things. Each stack on the battlefield, be it yours or your opponent’s ones, will act one after the other, in an order that can change through the fight. This should balance fights and avoid one player being able to slaughter the other player before he can even act.

There aren’t many big changes, but we’ve noticed that the magic in Heroes 6 was quite weaker than in Heroes 5.

Through fights, you must be careful and use the right unit at the right time, beware from ranged units, regeneration/heals effects and other bad surprises like flying units. It’s very tactical and battle will rarely be an easy job ! Also the AI is already quite decent.

Another good point : fights versus bosses, like in MMORPG. Bosses are huge monsters with huge amounts of hitpoints and special abilities that you’ll fight with your whole army. They are a good training for you to learn how to manage your troops or … not to get too attached to your superb stack of 999 shiny knights who will explode within the first turn of the fight !

There’s still a very bad point though about the city sieges which let us a very bad taste. Getting close to the walls before they fall is so costly in numbers of units that a siege is either suicidal or plain boring. Sieges look more like skirmishes between ranged units with the occasional help of a catapult and from time to time an offensive spell. It might be different at higher level, but in the limited preview we tested, it was plain boring to wait in front of a wall while our units were getting slaughtered.

Conclusion :
Heroes 6 is already very appealing and is at least as good as Heroes 5, but we know that Ubisoft still has some surprises that await us. We’ll of course wait for the 5th faction reveal in March (…)

Also no information about multiplayer has been revealed yet. Will Black Hole use some ideas from Kingdoms or use the basic multiplayer format from previous games ? Answers in several weeks …

Nice info, is there an online source for this, or did you translate it yourself?

Quote:Resources :
Though they still brought some changes to the game. First of all, the economic part of the game has been simplified : no more 7 resources, instead there are only 4 – the crystal being the only rare resource. This change makes the game pace much faster and more nervous.

This still bums me. For some of us, "faster" does not necessarily mean "better". If they wanted to avoid having factions depend more on one ressource than others, make demands of all ressources even. I don't see the problem. ____________
What will happen now?

Quote:Nice info, is there an online source for this, or did you translate it yourself?

Nope, I've translated a part of the 2 pages preview from the paper magazine. Most of what I let aside was already known like the storyline or the reputation system. I also ignored their speculations about Sylvans being the 5th faction ^^

Also, what I wrote previously about the Paladin/Vindicator abilities comes from there

Quote:The 2 advanced abilities for the Knight (Paladin/Vindicator) are :
- Martyrdom : PALADIN - Each time one of your stack is destroyed, all your allied stacks gain a huge damage bonus.
- Anathem : VINDICATOR - Allows the hero to curse the enemies and lower their defense.

Quote:There aren’t many big changes, but we’ve noticed that the magic in Heroes 6 was quite weaker than in Heroes 5.

Good. I hated the OP magic in H5.

Quote:not to get too attached to your superb stack of 999 shiny knights who will explode within the first turn of the fight !

Ok... I understand that devs didn't like Namtaru being defeated easily, when she could kill 333 hell hounds in one turn, but they also don't need to make her that strong
Well, at least the player has the advantage of having more stacks to use each turn...
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Come back soon, Elvin!

I watched the interview in HD, and I concluded that the water elemental is indeed the water spirit, and not a different kind of water lady.
We already saw the concept art of spring spirit:

But when we saw the "avatar" of the water elemental:
There was a doubt about if this creature, that was on the tree, yet it was different of the upgraded version of spring spirit, could be the Spring Spirit or another simillar creature.

But when we see the creature in-game, there is no crown at all. So the only conclusion is that they actually changed the spring spirit to a water elemental.
That means that we will have at least one surprise in the Sanctuary

The only question I have now about this water creature is: Did they scrapped the upgraded version?
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Come back soon, Elvin!